QOTD: The Failure To Call Fascism Fascism

From Gregg Barak's thoughtful analysis in Salon.com about the media's refusal to use the word "fascism" in describing the tactics of the Malignant Loser's cult / party to bring about one party, radical minority rule in the U.S.:

"For the past eight years, Trump has used fascist political and legal tactics to bring about an anti-democratic government, or to 'deconstruct the state apparatus' in the words of Steven Bannon. This entails breaking the democratic rules or systems of law and order in order to establish a hyperpartisan tyranny of a politically controlled minority. The majority of Republican elected officials, so far, and the Trumpian Republican Party as a whole are all in with anti-democratic authoritarianism, if not, fascism per se as elected representatives have been busy proposing and passing as fast as they can 'fascistic' legislation in every red state across America.

I think that the reluctance of the body politic and mass media to use the f word goes well beyond semantics. It is about the American psyche.

Nothing exemplifies this fascism more than their Trumpian attacks on the IRS, FBI, DOJ, prosecutors, judges, and anyone else trying to enforce the rule of law against him or his loyal followers. Not to mention the Trumpian Republican efforts to suppress the vote and to overturn the rules of democratic elections statewide for the purposes of nullifying the will of the people."

Some contend that this failure to call a fascist a fascist has to do with your definition of fascism. I think that the reluctance of the body politic and mass media to use the f word goes well beyond semantics. It is about the American psyche and our real or imagined identities of what Americans truly are, and the 4th estate's ideologies about delivering 'balanced' political news coverage — even when there is no symmetry whatsoever between the two adversarial sides."  (our emphasis)

He cites the media's facile default position of describing the Republicans' debt limit extortion as a "negotiation" between two equally responsible sides as an example of the problem. That distortion of reality only encourages the fascistic elements on the right to pursue their anti-democratic agenda without fear of exposure or challenge by the media.